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Chapter 5 The Great Election: The Emperor¡¯s Armored Face 277 Shiligou Water and Fire Street

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    Christmas Day, October 1872, Shuihuo Street outside Haijing City.

    It was a cloudy afternoon, with lead-colored clouds hanging in the sky. The sky had darkened early. The clouds and the lack of wind made the unique smell of kerosene on Shuihuo Street even more clear and pungent. The workers who were finishing their work and  There were more coolies on the streets, but they seemed to be accustomed to the smell. They were talking and laughing as they walked on the oil-stained dirt road under their feet, looking for a drink in a pub or bringing food to their families at a roadside stall.  Order food and go back.

    Shuihuo Street, as its name goes, you will know that this is a new place name after the founding of the Hai Song Dynasty, because Shuihuo is a name for kerosene, also called foreign oil.  With the name of foreign oil, it is conceivable that this street did not exist before.  More than ten years ago, the Mobil Oil Company of the United States bought a large piece of land on this street. It built a foreign oil wholesale company here. A company doing this kind of flammable and explosive business must have bought wilderness land. At that time,  It was just a large, lonely yard where kerosene was stored and a road leading to its door. As a court map maker, how could a court mapmaker name this nameless dirt road that crossed the reed swamps and graveyards?  You can only look at the water and fire vendors flowing above, which is called Water and Fire Street.

    This is located in the Shiligou area. The so-called Shiligou is a place ten miles away from the city wall.

    It turned out to be a mass graveyard and a reed swamp, but later the Haisong Dynasty saw an explosion of business prosperity. This place has a river and a wharf not far from the city. The land price was so low that it was like giving it away for free. There was even a large amount of land without owners. Chinese and foreign businessmen came here to buy land and start businesses:  First, two large textile and machinery factories were located here and roads were immediately built.  The wharf was expanded, and the imperial court set up a security police station specifically for this purpose. Coolies and unemployed farmers who wanted to be workers began to gather here, and businesses and real estate for workers began to rise. This created a cluster effect, and other factories also started to develop.  Come and build in the surrounding area. After all, factories also like to cluster together - if there are many factories, there will naturally be logistics, a concentration of labor, and a trading market. The bigger the market, the more factories and people will come, not to mention that the land here is super cheap.

    ??For the Haisong Dynasty of this era, and even for countries such as Britain, the United States, and France.  Wherever there are factories there are slums.  Only slums have the cheapest labor force, and cheap labor resources will inevitably bring more factories to enter. This is what economists at the time called the "equilibrium point of industrial zones."

    When foreigners first arrived in Haijing, they had no jobs.  Can't read or write.  You can only go to a few industrial areas that may change your destiny.  It can also be called a must-go slum, and Shiligou is one of them, but the wages are definitely extremely low.  And the competition is extremely fierce. Some poets have recorded:

    There are hundreds of silks in front of Shiligou,

    There is a chance to make a living.

    No more commissions are worth the trouble,

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    The new refugees have no money, no skills, low income, or even jobs, so they can only sleep in sheds. Therefore, there are extremely spectacular rolling dragons in Shiligou area (shacks made of reeds and bamboo poles, people sleep on the ground). Standing on a high place, you can see  Looking at it, it looks exactly the same as it did 20 years ago: then there were endless reed swamps, and now there are endless thatched huts. Of course, there were no countless smoking chimneys in the distance.

    Shiligou is like this. From a random graveyard, due to the choices of the times, it spontaneously turned into one of the largest slums in Haijing. Of course, according to the Haisong Huangbao, it is a "strongly emerging industrial new zone and another crown jewel in the Far East."  "A Pearl" - the perspective is different.

    ¡°But Shiligou is not just endless sheds and stench. The slums are definitely not a gathering place for useless people waiting to die. They are concentration camps or a gathering place for war-torn refugees.

    This is not a place for starved candidates to wait to die. On the contrary, the slums are a treasure trove of labor: smart workers, mule-like coolies, diligent nannies, considerate servants, and even the infertile master¡¯s young master, all of them are  It can be born from here, and it is extremely cheap.

    So simple wooden buildings, courtyards, and even Western-style store buildings were built outside the sheds. Because the factory goods were sold, the gentlemen were comfortable, and the small bosses made money, then money in the form of wages flowed in.  In this slum, people who have done well have become skilled workers, managers and even bosses. What they need is better housing; and restaurants, rice grains, barber shops, etc. that provide services to the workers also need  Storefront?  Chinese and foreign real estate developers are very smart. Industrial areas and slums have formed a balance, and they have also formed a balance with the real estate industry of large and small rental houses.

    "There are talents and wealth, and the slums are a cornucopia." A proverb in the industry and commerce.

    Water and Fire Street was originally too simple and too long to be drawn on the map because lazy cartographers were too lazy to name sections. Now it has become the backbone of this slum. The factory area near Jianghai Wharf in the distance has become the heart. On the backbone  The internal organs and sewage are automatically generated between the body and the heart, which is very dirty, but that is the source of power for the ocean of money;

    &nbspAt its peak, foot traffic represents newspaper sales.

    The two or three hours between dawn and dusk will determine how many taels of rice he can bring back to his seriously ill mother and several younger brothers and sisters. If he is lucky, he might be able to buy a reed mat to cover the leaky shed at home.  superior.

    Just as the newsboy was rushing across the road towards a passing coal carriage, he was twisting his neck and shouting, and suddenly he felt something was caught on his ankle, and he flew forward in an instant.

    However, a pair of strong hands wrapped around his waist, stopped him in the air, and then put him down heavily. The newsboy stared with frightened eyes. What caught his eyes was a man who looked very gentle. He had just been tripped and flew away from him.  , it was this man who twisted his waist and pulled himself back from the prospect of rolling around on the ground.

    "Thank yousir! Do you want to buy the latestnewspaper?Big news!" The newsboy stared at this dark and thin little gentleman and said,  The time is a bit stuttering, after all, gratitude and sales are often two different things in the minds of Chinese people.

    "Watch the road! If I don't hold you, you will be run over by a coal truck! Why don't you leave quickly?!" Unexpectedly, the gentleman wearing glasses looked very fierce. He came up and roared, and the newsboy shrank his head timidly.  , like a hen that sensed danger and took two steps back with its neck curled up. After all, as a newsboy, it is common to be beaten, kicked or even hit by a car during the business process.

    But he still wanted to thank, or was planning how to thank this gentleman who helped him so generously, but the gentleman had already stared and yelled: "Why don't you get out?!"

    Bowing hastily, the newsboy turned around the intersection. It took a long time to hear his cries again. This time, he was not confident enough. He was probably frightened.

    He pricked up his ears until he heard the timid shouting of the newsboy dozens of meters away. The thin black man with glasses breathed a sigh of relief and hurriedly crossed the road. As he walked, he took out a newspaper from his sleeve and used the lens behind his glasses.  His eyes looked around, and this time he no longer looked like a gentleman, but like a thief - he had just tripped the newsboy and took the opportunity to steal the newspaper out of the kid's back.

    He leaned against a tree and eagerly opened the newspaper with his trembling thumbs that smelled of kerosene. His eyeballs rolled up and down as if he were licking eyeglasses, and he muttered: "President Song You changed people?  President Song You has been changed? President Song You has been changed?" The news was not on the front page. The front page was now occupied by the Opium War, the dangers of opium smuggling and criticism from both parties, but he still found the bold words on the back of the first page.  The news is big news after all.

    He trembled with some fear, and then the newspaper became like wings. This man buried his whole head and face into the wings of the newspaper like a goose bending its neck.

    After a long time, he raised his face, which already showed a ferocious expression of gnashed teeth, and hummed a few words between his teeth: "Weng Jianguang, you bastard is retribution!"

    But when he gritted his teeth and put the stolen newspaper under his arm and hurriedly walked a few meters, his expression suddenly collapsed, and he slumped on the roadside. Several people who approached thought that this man was addicted.  The opium ghost hurriedly got out of the way, but what I heard at this moment was a cry: "Song You is my hope, it's gone, what should I do?"

    This person is Fang Bingsheng, the abandoned general of Song You Tiedian.  (To be continued, please search Piaotian Literature. The novels will be better and updated faster!
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